An alleged promo video thought to show off an unreleased build of Google Now for the iPhone and iPad has piqued our interest, as you could imagine. It was pulled from YouTube soon after, posing questions about the state of the official Google Now software for Apple’s mobile platform.

Speaking at the Google Big Tent Summit in India, Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt hints Google Now has been submitted to Apple for approval. He suggested the ball is now in Apple’s court. If approved, Google Now features are likely to be added to the Internet giant’s native Search iOS app.

Update: Apple confirmed to CNET that Google never submitted Google Now to the App Store in the first place…

Google Now, a new Android 4.2.x Jelly Bean feature, is designed to harvest various bits of information from your Google Account, Gmail messages, search queries, calendars, contacts and other places in order to present the exact right information, exactly when the user needs it.

Skeptics think Google is foolish to port such a major feature of Android to iOS.

I wholeheartedly disagree: Google knows what it’s doing here.

Keep in mind Google is giving away Android for free. It’s not like the company is in it for market share or anything like that, despite its lead in terms of activations and Android handset sales.

But with iOS already earning Google an estimated four times the revenue of Android, Google clearly doesn’t discriminate when it comes to providing its services across platforms.

The more people use Google services on their mobile devices (Android or not), the more value the company can put on ads shown to mobile users. And advertising is what makes Google tick.

Last fall, some Now aspects made it into Google’s Search iOS app, here’s your promo.

For once I totally agree with u Dan. I love and use all of googles standalone apps over their iOS competitor built in apps. The only thing that apple has on google (besides a strong following) is stability, security, and ease of use when it comes to their phones. The google search app combined with chrome running nitrous is much better than searching in safari/browsing in safari, and google maps shits on apple maps. Hopefully apple will approve google now quicker than they did with google maps or again they will have a lot of unhappy users.

The podcasts app works fine for me if you’re implying it crashes a lot. I even have it set to subscribe to iDB’s podcast 😉

I don’t think Apple should approve this app any quicker than they’d approve any other app Google should not have any special treatment just because they’re google.

IndiePhoenix

Yes, the Podcasts app was a bit unstable in the first releases but now I think it’s quite good. I have subscribed to lots of podcasts and I’m quite content. Maybe you haven’t used it in a while. Even on my 3Gs it used to work quite all right.

Smart move. Putting the pressure on Apple to approve it before it is even submitted. Same as the so called leaked teaser. Google purposely released it together iOS users excited and demand it from apple. Just my 2 cents.

Ads

“Update: Apple confirmed to CNET that Google never submitted Google Now to the App Store in the first place. As often, Eric Schmidt is just playing candid… ”

Obviously Google never submitted Google Now to the App Store because, according to the leaked promo, it’s supposed to be incorporated into the preexisting Google Search app!